


Upon the King's Roads

by Anonymous



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Bad Decisions, Dubious Consent, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Simultaneously on the same page and on very different pages, Sort of dubious consent, The King's Roads, The consent is predicated on some dubious decision making on both their parts, so make of that what you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:15:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25561918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After episode 5 of the televisions series (or after Arabella 'dies' in the book), Strange comes to Norrell through the mirrors demanding answers to Norrell's miraculous resurrection of Lady Pole.  When Norrell refuses, Strange pulls him through the mirror and to the King's Roads.  Things devolve from there.  (Originally posted on the JS&MN kink meme).
Relationships: Gilbert Norrell/Jonathan Strange
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15
Collections: Anonymous





	Upon the King's Roads

A figure came hurtling through the mirror in a burst of color and sound, and Gilbert Norrell sprang to his feet faster than he had done since a rat had scurried across the floor of Hurtfew’s library years before. Now, as then, Norrell’s instinct was to shout for Childermass, which he did and loudly, but the man was off and away at the engravers, damn him! Norrell knew that there were spells to banish an enemy from one’s sight, but in his moment of panic every incantation deserted him.

The man straightened up, and for a second Norrell was convinced it was the Raven King himself. His heart was hammering in his throat, and he opened his mouth to say he knew not what. Not an apology, for he still believed that the Raven King had abandoned England and himself in equal measure, and his sudden appearance would not change that.

But it was not the Raven King who turned to him; it was Jonathan Strange in a dreadful state. His eyes were red and sunken. His clothing was disheveled, and he wore what Norrell at first thought to be a housecoat, but appeared to be a black robe. He looked as the magicians of old, wild and dangerous. Norrell was terrified; whatever else Strange might be, he was not stable. His wife’s loss had caused some fundamental damage Norrell could not fathom, nor fix.

Magic could not cure madness. It could only stoke the flames.

In the distance Norrell heard the pound of footsteps as Lascelles, Lucas, and Davey ran toward the library. Strange flung his hand toward the door, and Norrell heard the latch turn as it locked. There was a counterspell for Omskirk’s spell of locking, which Norrell believed to be the spell Strange preferred, but in his terror he could not recall it either. 

Strange approached him then, and Norrell had never been more aware how tall he was. His former pupil had never loomed over Norrell, despite their differences. He had never taken advantage, but he did then, and Norrell shrank back against his bookcase. “What magic did you use to bring Lady Pole back from death?” Strange demanded.

“What are you doing here?” Norrell demanded in return, attempting to sound defiant and very much failing.

Strange ignored him. “Tell me what spell you used, sir! I have tried everything! I have attempted summoning a fairy—”

“You have done what?!”

“—but none would attend me. I attempted the same magic I used in Spain, but she would not wake! I know no other way, and yet you managed it, and for a time it even worked! Tell me how you did it, sir. I requested it with utmost politeness before, and you did not respond. Now I demand it.”

The horror of the situation compounded. It was no wonder that Strange should ask it, but to come through the mirrors, to stand so close and ask the impossible? It was not fair! “You have no rights coming to my house and making demands of me, Mr. Strange,” Norrell said. “Have you not considered that I did not respond for excellent reasons?”

“You did not respond because you fear for your reputation,” Strange scoffed. 

“I did not respond because it will not work!”

“Tell me what the spell is, and allow me to try to change it! I could make it work correctly; I know it!”

Why would Strange not listen? Why did he never listen? “No, you could not. The spell is fundamentally flawed at its most central mechanism. And even if you managed it, Mr. Strange, no method of resurrection has ever worked correctly. Your wife would either go mad, as Lady Pole has done, or she would be something far worse. She would be your wife in flesh only, and entirely changed in spirit.”

“I do not care! I simply want her back!”

“You cannot have her.” Norrell’s expression softened and he took a hesitant step toward Strange, although attempts at comfort and kindness had never been his strong suit. Still this was Jonathan Strange, and for him alone Norrell was willing to try. “I am sorry for it, Mr. Strange, I truly am. But I cannot give you what you ask. It cannot be done.”

“The Raven King did it.”

“We are neither of us the Raven King, and we cannot perform his magic.”

“I can! I did it in Spain and I can do it once more.”

Norrell could not contain the disparaging noise in his throat. Whatever Strange had done in the Peninsula had been terrible. Even in the extremes of his madness he could not think to inflict such a spell upon his wife.

But he had, or so he claimed, and it had not worked, nor would a fairy attend him. Why was that? Strange’s magic was, admittedly, far more akin to fairy magic than Norrell’s. Why would the fair folk reject Strange when one had come readily to Norrell?

Strange looked furious at Norrell’s nonverbal dismissal. He straightened to his full height, which served to emphasize his ragged appearance. “I am John Uskglass’ magician, sir,” he said with utmost confidence. “That you cannot perform his magic is no surprize, but I believe in him. Surely, then, his power too can be mine.”

What madness was this? That Strange had always been confident in his own abilities was no secret, but this went beyond confidence and into the grandest hubris. “This is nonsense! Just because you esteem him does not mean you could become as him! He was the most powerful magician to ever have lived. You are powerful, I grant you, but you do not approach him, and to presume you do is the height of vanity!”

Strange stepped still nearer, and in the scant distance between them his voice dropped to a rumble. “I would do anything—become anything—to find the magic to bring her back. Do not doubt me.”

“You cannot.”

Strange let out a cry of frustration. “What do you know of what I can and cannot do? What do you know of love and loss?”

The question struck Norrell deeply and terribly. He flinched back as though it had been a physical blow, and could not stop the prick of tears in his eyes. How dare Strange ask that of him? How could he not know, after their parting? After Norrell had offered him the keys to Hurtfew’s library if he would but stay? Did Strange believe he would do such a thing lightly, for just anyone? Outside Norrell himself, only Childermass possessed a set of keys, and then only because it had been necessary for his work. Giving Strange a set was not a gesture of necessity, but of regard. How dare he?

In that bare instant, Strange froze and looked upon Norrell with an understanding that pierced through his veil of madness and grief. Norrell felt he had been laid bare, and hated Strange with a great passion for visiting such unpleasantness upon him. 

They stared at one another with that understanding, and there came a pounding upon the door. Norrell could hear Lascelles shouting for the police to be summoned; for Lucas and Davey to break down the door. Norrell thought again of Childermass, far away at the engravers. Would he be running back, only to arrive to find … what? What would Strange do, when he realized that Norrell would not tell him what he had done?

Strange’s expression hardened. He looked to the door, shaking under the increasing fervor of the pounding upon the other side. Then he looked to Mr. Norrell with the most dreadful intent. In that moment, Norrell realized how dangerous Strange had become. He turned well-known pages in his mind, thinking of all the defensive spells writ down in Sutton-Grove, but all their letters squirmed and bled together in his panic. He needed time! He needed his books! 

Norrell stumbled back another step, bringing his hands up and pouring whatever instinctual magic was at his disposal into them, to do he knew not what. Strange lunged forward, seizing him by the robe, and spinning him about. Norrell let out a shout of horror as he tripped over his own housecoat and began to fall. He grasped hold of Strange’s arms, and his magic spilled between them, tangling itself in the wild and unnameable morass that surrounded Strange. It stole his breath.

The door burst open, splintered at the lock. Lucas and Davey ran into the room, and Strange let out a great cry, hurling them both toward the mirror. Norrell realized what was about to happen a second before it did, and flung one hand out in a desperate bid for rescue, which went quite unanswered. Lascelles stood in the doorway, dumb in horror, so instead of being snatched back into sane and rational lands, Norrell felt himself break through the surface of the mirror, and the whole of the world went tumbling about him.

The world melted and inverted, all colors becoming one color. Norrell’s cry of terror dissolved into that color, and yet in spite of everything coming apart about him, he could still feel Strange’s hands gripping tight to the lapels of his housecoat.

Then the world resolved itself once again, but not into the familiar lines of his library. They stood upon a darkling road, under a sky without sun or stars or moon. What might have once been grand edifices stood crumbling about them, and even the cobbles of the road were loose and treacherous. It was a place abandoned, as Norrell had always suspected. The Raven King had built the roads, carving them in his image and to his glory, but he cared not for them or for England any more. They were broken, just as any pact between John Uskglass and his people was. Looking out upon the endless, twisting abyss of roads, Norrell felt nothing but bitter resentment for a king who would deny them.

And yet, it was a fitting spot, was it not? It was the symbol of all he had lost Strange to, of all the worst and wildest ruination of a proper English magician. 

Then Strange’s voice broke through, asking the one question that would have shaken Norrell from any contemplation. “You understand quite well, do you not?”

Norrell turned, remembering that moment before Lascelles had arrived, the moment when Strange had realized what Norrell had kept from him for years. Not the secret of his spell upon Lady Pole, but something to him far worse and far dearer. He opened his mouth to deny it, lest Strange twist Norrell’s one treasured sentiment against him, but be was not granted the opportunity for rebuttal, for even as his opened his mouth Strange crashed his own over it.

Norrell froze to the spot, unable to think for the press. This had not happened to him before. As a young man, Norrell had been consumed with magic, and far too aware that his own romantic inclinations were not at all suitable to a respectable young gentleman. It had been better, then, to devote himself to his books and, at the time, the thought of the Raven King. Surely such a man would come if a true magician called him.

The folly of his youth had soured over the long and lonely years. He found great solace in books and the words of his long-dead predecessors, enough so he could clear his mind of the stray imaginings and longings that still plagued him when Childermass stood too close and spoke low into his ear.

But Jonathan Strange had disrupted all his caution. He had been the perfect trap: dashing and brilliant and brimming with the magic that had isolated Norrell for so very long. They had worked together so closely, and were it not for Strange’s inconvenient marriage, Norrell rather thought Strange might have come to live with him. Even after their separation, Norrell clung to those years as the brightest of his life.

And suddenly, with no warning, Strange was pressing upon him all that he could not have. How dare he? Did he think Norrell a fool? Did he think he would not recognize so blatant a bribe? Norrell was not so desperate as to accept scraps when Strange thought only of his wife. He would rather have nothing at all.

But that resolve, noble and righteous though it was, crumbled when Strange ran his tongue against the roof of Norrell’s mouth. What had never before been a particular sensitivity for him, now lit him suddenly and intensely. Norrell grasped Strange’s arms without intending to, his body taken with shivers.

Strange drew back the barest inch and nipped at Norrell’s lower lip, which Norrell expected to find painful but instead felt as a sharp burst of pleasure, soothed by another brush of his tongue. Where had Strange learned such things?

Between ever more provocative kisses, Strange began to speak. “You understand,” he said, tugging Norrell’s lip between his teeth, “what it is to lose someone.” He teased his tongue at the lip again and again, as Norrell shuddered. “You understand,” he said, and moved his mouth along Norrell’s jaw, “what it is to have the only person you want out of your reach.” He found the bone under Norrell’s ear and pressed his mouth to it, sucking. Another burst of alien sensation crashed over Norrell, hot and heavy and uncontrollable. Was this some form of magic about which he had not read? Was Strange enchanting him? Surely his mouth alone was not enough to render Norrell helpless in his hands. “You understand,” Strange went on, “how much you would be willing to do to be given that one unexpected chance to have them back.” He trailed his mouth down, scraping with tongue and teeth as he tore off Norrell’s neckcloth and pushed aside his collar. He found a place near the join of throat and sternum that made Norrell’s hand upon his robe clutch with white knuckles, and he worried at it until Norrell’s legs felt on the verge of collapse and his breathing was reduced to ragged gasping.

Then Strange drew back, staring down at Norrell with dilated eyes. “You understand, do you not?”

Mr. Norrell’s face twisted in utmost torment. How dare Strange offer this of all things? He could have gone the rest of his life in ignorance of the feel of Strange’s mouth upon his throat, and been content. 

“Of course I understand,” Norrell whispered. “Damn you.”

"Then tell me. It is all I ask."

“I won’t. For your sake and hers, I will not tell you.”

Strange drew near again, looming without his former malice, but with an energy that Norrell did not like. “I would pay any price for that knowledge, Mr. Norrell, as well you know.”

“Such things are not acceptable payment,” Norrell said, turning away lest he be tempted. “I would have you willingly or not at all.”

“And what if it were not payment, sir? What if it were freely given?”

“I would not believe it. You have just lost your wife. Your thoughts would not turn to me unless there was something I had that you desired, which indeed there is.”

“I have just lost my wife,” Strange said, “and I cannot say that I am entirely myself without her. For here in these abandoned places, wild thoughts might go through a man’s head. Magic, sir, is the only certainty I have now. You understand that too, do you not? How it calls to a man, drawing him in? How it reaches out for any other magics it might find.” Strange’s hands came down upon Norrell’s shoulders, and he tensed when he felt Strange’s breath stir against his ear. “Give me my answers, sir.”

“No.”

Strange’s mouth was upon his throat once more. “Give me my answers.”

“No,” Norrell said once more, though it emerged closer to a sob.

“Damn your stubbornness,” Strange growled, and it was a rumble against his skin that made Mr. Norrell quake. “You understand what I feel, but you refuse to grant me the relief you have at your fingertips!”

Norrell kept his mouth shut, and Strange moved back. Norrell slumped then, hand reaching out to catch himself against the crumbling wall before him. Perhaps now that Strange realized there would be no compromise on this particular subject he would leave. Norrell could not think of any other way their encounter would end. 

Then his arm was caught, and he was turned about. Strange crowded in close, pressing him back against the wall in a flurry. “You understand,” he said, “but only in the barest degrees. That is the problem.”

“I understand better than I have any desire to, Mr. Strange. Any greater understanding is not required.”

“It is, though. When you understand fully, you will tell me what I wish.”

“I will not, sir.”

Strange nodded his head. “We shall see,” he said, and then caught Norrell up in another kiss, this time pressed against the wall. Norrell tried very hard not to respond, knowing full well that Strange did not mean half of what he offered, and would snatch back the rest as soon as he was granted what he wished. But Strange’s mouth was wide and soft and it promised things Norrell thought he would never receive in his life. Could he accept this, but deny the inevitable request that would come after? Could this act stand alone, as a thing that happened fully separate from their own world and worries? Could he, just for once, have precisely what he wanted?

Norrell’s hands decided for him, coming up to tangle tight in the curls he had spent years wanting to touch. He kissed Strange back without skill, but with every ounce of ardor he possessed. If they were to be damned, as surely they were, then in that moment Norrell thought only to be damned together.

Strange rocked forward into the kiss, the air all around him a lightning strike of magic and danger. His hands pushed Norrell’s cap from his head and rubbed at his scalp and the skin about his ears in the most distracting manner. Their magic twisted tighter and tighter anout them. Norrell grew dizzy with kissing and the feel of Strange’s magic sinking into his own. 

Strange must have felt it too, for he let out a sudden and desperate groan, pressed the whole of his body to Norrell’s and began such a deliberate thrusting with his tongue that it could not but be suggestive of other acts. Norrell, no longer in a frame of mind to be cautious, felt a desperate thrill at the thought. Strange kissed him with rough abandon; with the intent to leave a mark. He pressed hard enough to bruise, and Norrell nipped at his tongue a bit too hard, drawing blood.

Strange drew back, gasping, but not appearing dissuaded. Instead, his blood seemed to spark the magic around them, adding a darker and more dangerous edge. How close were they straying to black magic? What would happen if it went unchecked?

Norrell could not bring himself to care. He tore Strange’s neckcloth off, found the place beneath Strange’s ear that Strange had found upon him, and applied his teeth to it. Strange’s breath left his body, and he shoved the robe from Norrell’s shoulders before shedding his own. Norrell found that some light application of his teeth to Strange’s skin drew from him the most provocative moans, and so applied himself to his task, attempting to find the line between pleasure and discomfort. 

Strange kept busy unbuttoning their shirts, although he did not press Norrell away to remove them entirely. Rather, he pulled one arm and then the other free from his own sleeves and let the rest hang about his waist. Norrell could not think to do the same, with so much skin so very suddenly on offer. He leaned back to touch, feeling for the first time as though he might be trespassing, but his fingers ghosted across Strange’s chest lightly, and Strange did not object. The hair running down the center of it crinkled under his fingers most pleasingly, and as he ran the flats of his hands outward, he brushed across the softer skin of Strange’s nipples.

Strange gave a start and a groan, and Norrell could not resist. He lunged forward and applied his mouth, and then his teeth to the brown skin, and Strange gasped and cursed and trembled under him. It was delirious to have such power. It was perfect.

Then Strange stripped the shirt from Norrell’s shoulders and down, trapping his wrists in his cuffs and pinning his arms behind his back. Strange laid hold of Norrell’s shoulders and, with a grace Norrell could only attribute to his experiences with the army, pushed Norrell backward and overbalanced him.

Norrell shouted, frightened by the sudden loss of control, but Strange did not let him fall, instead easing him back onto the crumple of their robes. Norrell tried to free the wrists pinned behind his back, but could not do it. 

Strange bent his head over Norrell and then did to Norrell what Norrell had done to him. His mouth pressed first to the hollow of Norrell’s throat and then moved down his chest. The first lave of his tongue across Norrell’s nipple sent a spark so hot through him that Norrell cried out at it.

Strange did not relent. If anything, he increased his efforts, licking and then sucking and then biting. Norrell was shaking too hard to free himself, the cacophany of pleasure almost overwhelming the twisting magic between and about them. Was this why gentlemen pursued sexual encounters with such fervor? Was the pleasure so keen as to be painful for them as well? For an instant, Strange’s teeth pressed too sharp, and the line between pleasure and pain was annihilated. Norrell let out a wail that scarcely sounded like his own voice.

“You understand,” Strange said, pleading and desperate and so many other things that Norrell would be ill-equipped to identify at his most lucid. Then his hand was at Norrell’s breeches, and Norrell could not care to think on Strange’s motivations any further.

Their clothing was pushed and kicked aside, leaving Norrell still constricted by his shirt, but otherwise wearing only one stocking and a shoe. Strange managed to remove all his clothing, and Norrell could not help the noise of utter want he let out when he saw the man bared.

Strange kissed him then, pressing down upon him with a knee between his thighs, locking them together intimately. He moved atop Norrell, and the shifting abrasion upon his abused nipples and his nether regions made the breath sob in his throat.

Then Strange drew back, met Norrell’s eyes, and whispered a spell between them. Their bodies and the magic ceased to have any barrier between them. The sensation of a thousand unseen hands crawled across Norrell’s skin, touching him everywhere. His mouth fell open and Strange’s did the same. Strange continued to incant, weaving the spell all about them. The hands were feather-light and intimate, and Norrell shuddered as they seemed to leave tingling currents in their wake, chilling his heated skin in gooseflesh. When Strange pressed close to him again, the sensation amplified, and he realized that not only were the barriers between themselves and magic failing, but the barriers that kept them separate individuals seemed to be fading as well. For in that press he could feel Strange upon him, and he could feel his own body pressing back.

A few more words, and all the magic about them, in the roads and the walls and the moss and themselves came suddenly and blazingly to life. Norrell cried out at the intensity of it running through him and filling him to bursting. “Oh god, sir,” Strange groaned, pressing his forehead to Norrell’s in a daze. “Do you feel it?”

Norrell’s chest was heaving, his body trembling in the ecstacy of the spell, and he was unable to do more than nod. Strange groaned again and rolled his hips. The spell caught the movement and echoed it, so that Norrell felt he was both thrusting and being pressed down upon all at once. 

“You understand this,” Strange repeated again, thrusting in earnest. “You understand.”

Norrell kissed him, and Strange continued to shape the words against Norrell’s mouth again and again. Their rutting was becoming frantic, all sensations building to some unbearable pinnacle, but before Norrell could reach it Strange drew back.

Norrell let out a protest that might well have consisted of words, although he could not say it for certain. But instead of drawing back fully, Strange once again dipped his head down, finding and biting his nipples again, then moving further down.

Strange paused then, head between Norrell’s legs. “If you do not wish this,” he said, “deny me.”

Norrell had no idea why Strange would ask such a foolish question. The anticipation of that mouth upon him was sharp, and he whispered, “You’ll have no denial from me.”

Strange’s mouth took the tip of him in, and Norrell pressed his head back upon the cobbles, attempting not to fall apart. But even as that sensation took him, another came: something pressed inside him, shocking him and spreading his legs all at once. It was not a finger, but rather something that was and was not present all at once. Something magic, intangible but strangely slick at the same time.

It expanded in pulses, first barely noticeable, but growing and contracting with each stroke of Strange’s tongue upon him. Norrell was desperate to touch, desperate to clutch his fingers in Strange’s hair and regain at least some control of the situation. But he was pinned, and willingly.

The expanding presence inside him grew large enough that it began to press upon those ill-defined borders of pleasure and pain once more. Norrell shouted, high and sharp as it pressed against something within him, causing Strange to draw back with a gasp. 

He stared down at Norrell, laid out and desperate. “Deny me,” he said again, shifting to kneel. He sounded frightened for some reason, and very broken. Was this a warning or a request? Norrell could not tell, and rather thought he should not be the one to decide this.

For Norrell could not bring himself to deny any of it. “Please, Mr. Strange,” he said.

Strange grasped him under the knees and gave a rough tug that brought Norrell’s hips and lower back up onto Strange’s thighs. The angle was all wrong for Norrell’s hands, which had begun to tingle, and he struggled once more with the shirt that held him trapped. Then Strange shifted his weight, driving Norrell back onto his shoulders, and the tip of him pressed where the magical presence already resided.

Norrell closed his eyes tightly at the first intrusion of something not made of magic. It was hot and hard and bigger even than the magic had been. It was an inexorable pressure, driving into him with a sudden and sharp pain. His breath hissed between his teeth and he struggled in earnest with the shirt, thinking perhaps to push Strange away, or at least to slow him.

But just as soon as the pain began, it was chased by pleasure, as Strange found the place inside him that the magic had also found. Then he was drawing back to rub against that place again and again. Norrell’s sleeve finally yielded, and when his hand found Strange, it was to drag him down so Norrell could kiss him again. To be entirely fair, to define the gesture as a kiss was at best a generality, for far more than a kiss it was breathing into one another’s mouths, unable to keep contact for more than seconds. 

Strange’s eyes were tightly closed, and Norrell found himself both wishing Strange would look at him, and very grateful that he would not. He himself kept his gaze locked on Strange’s face, upon the play of strains and emotions, and tried to crystallize it in his mind as something that would last for the rest of his life. 

And then he could not even hold that thought in his head, because whatever pinnacle he had seen before was suddenly very much upon him. Norrell gasped hard, clinging tightly to Strange lest he lose any grip on reality. The magic was there, and it was entirely overwhelming. Strange was there, and he had always been overwhelming. His eyes came open just then, and Norrell fell apart under the heat of that curious gaze.

Strange looked surprized when his movements quickened as well, and then he released a loud, low groan. Norrell felt the oddest sensation as Strange spent himself, the pressure of it and of the magic that shattered about Strange both leaving him shaken by aftershocks.

Strange collapsed, and the weight of him was as much a delight as it was a bit awkward. Norrell’s hands soothed through his hair, enjoying it for as long as he was allowed.

“Mr. Norrell,” Strange said, and Norrell knew all too well what came next. It was no easier to hear his voice, hoarse with overuse, rephrase and say, “Gilbert.”

“Please don’t,” Norrell said. “Just for a few moments, please don’t ask.”

Strange’s words hummed against Norrell’s ear. “You understand,” he said, and it sounded like despair, for the secret was, of course, that Norrell had been truthful: he understood Strange’s grief even before being granted this glimpse into what he might have had, and his answer had remained unchanged.

“I understand.” 


End file.
